Dark web's largest illegal marketplace, founded by Canadian, shut down by U.S.

The U.S. Justice Departmentsaid on Thursday it had shut down the dark web marketplaceAlphaBay, working with international partners to knock offlinethe site accused of allowing hundreds of thousands of people tobuy and sell drugs, firearms, computer hacking tools and otherillicit goods.

It is one of the largest law enforcement actionsever taken against criminals on the dark web, authorities said,striking a blow to the international drug trade that hasincreasingly moved online in recent years.

AlphaBay mysteriously went offline earlier this month. Itwas widely considered the biggest online black market for drugs,estimated to host daily transactions totalling hundreds ofthousands of dollars.

The site allowed users to sell and buy opioids, includingfentanyl and heroin, contributing to a rising drug epidemic inthe United States, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.

"The dark net is not a place to hide," Sessions said at anews briefing in Washington, D.C., to announce the action. "Thisis likely one of the most important criminal investigations ofthe year taking down the largest dark net marketplace in history."

The Justice Department said law enforcement partners in theNetherlands had taken down Hansa Market, another dark webmarketplace.

AlphaBay and Hansa Market were two of the top three criminalmarketplaces on the dark web, Europol chief Rob Wainwright saidat the news conference. The international operation to seize AlphaBay's servers alsoinvolved authorities in Thailand, Lithuania, Canada, Britain andFrance.

The operation included the arrest on July 5 of suspectedAlphaBay founder Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian citizen arrested onbehalf of the United States in Thailand.

Cazes, 25, apparently took his own life a week later while inThai custody, the Justice Department said. He faced chargesrelating to narcotics distribution, identity theft, moneylaundering and related crimes.

FBI acting director Andrew McCabe said AlphaBay was 10 times as large as Silk Road, a dark website the agency shutdown in 2013.